REVIEW 530: POKKIRI SIMON – ORU KADUTHA AARADHAKAN

If you are looking
for a ruminative film on the nature of stardom and fandom, skip this one.

Pokkiri Simon: Oru Kadutha Aaradhakan revolves around a
bunch of crazed Malayali devotees of the Tamil megastar Vijay. They are the
sort of guys who run fan clubs with the enthusiasm regular folk would invest in a
professional enterprise, bathe the actor’s giant cutouts in milk before his theatrical
releases, dance madly in the hall, watch each film repeatedly until they know
the dialogues by heart, and then make so much noise repeating those lines in
subsequent viewings that other members of the audience cannot hear a word of
what is going on. In short, just the kind who solemnly address
Vijay as Ilayathalapathy (Young Commander).

At first, this is fair
enough, as a rather nice cast’s energy spills over from the screen and humour
flies about in the
film. Sunny Wayne plays Simon, nicknamed Pokkiri
Simon after one of his idol’s hits that the north knows in the form of its Hindi
remake Wanted with Salman Khan and
Ayesha Takia.

Simon and his friends
– Hanuman Biju (Jacob Gregory) and Love Today Ganesh (Sarath Kumar) – seem to
want nothing more in life than to be photographed with Vijay. Towards this end
they work hard to outshine rival clubs both in Kerala and Tamil Nadu, including
one commandeered by Naushad (Saiju Kurup). Their families are anxious about
their unhealthy obsession with their god, but lest we viewers too view their
pursuit as frivolous, they put their network to good use to nab criminals that
the establishment is too afraid to touch.

A light-hearted
take on filmaniacs would have been fine, but Pokkiri Simon becomes a victim of its desire to prove that it is
more than that, just as the story’s Vijay worshippers are determined not to be
seen as aimless empty heads. And so after a fun – even if cliched – first half
hour, in which director Jijo Antony and writer K. Ampady imply that they are up
for a spot of spoofing, it turns out they want their film to be taken
seriously. They then start packing too much into the plot, ranging from a
discussion on the profound significance of the protagonists’ film fanaticism to
household challenges, unemployment, classism and a romance before switching dramatically
somewhere in the second half from the comedy genre to thriller mode.

It is not that
Ampady completely lacks imagination. There is a point being made in the fans’
irreverence towards holy cows such as religion and the national anthem, in
sharp contrast to their unquestioning zeal for Vijay. That said, these instances of
nuance in the script are fleeting.

The post-interval
portion does not work at all for the simple reason that by then the film is
already overly long and over-stuffed. Though Pokkiri Simon focuses on an important issue – child trafficking –
after the break, and to be fair, Antony does not treat the subject lightly, the
theme does not sit well with the narrative because it comes so late in the day
that it feels like an afterthought: not a concern to which the team is
committed, but a device to introduce unexpected twists and sustain audience
interest.

It is worth
mentioning that a character in the film claims that Vijay fans respect women.
Baah! Witness the abuse they spew at women who critique the star on the social
media in real life. Their misogyny is reflected in Pokkiri Simon, which becomes increasingly sexist and venomous as it
moves along. A man in the film discusses a cow’s udders swollen with milk, then
looks meaningfully at a buxom woman. While it may well be argued that this
crudeness comes from the principal villain, and therefore cannot be seen as a
trivialisation of degrading objectification, someone please explain what we are
to make of one of the ‘nice guys’, played by no less a personage than Nedumudi
Venu, telling a stranger on a beach that her “body shape” is good? The creepy
old chap is a retired rocket scientist and one of Simon’s friends.

That is not all.
The camera leers at the heroine as she jogs. Later, the hero stalks her.
Elsewhere, a snide remark about learning to cut fish aimed at Simon by his
mother reveals the writer’s amusement at the thought of a husband managing his
house while his wife goes out to work.

Most unnerving
though is the casualness with which the supposedly good men in this film
threaten to beat their female partners. Ganesh’s wife Jaya (Srinda Arhaan)
storms off in the middle of a fight when he raises his hand to hit her, but she
does not specifically object to his action. Worse, Simon’s otherwise feisty
mother falls silent and quakes in fear when his father – an honest police
constable – hollers at her with threats.

This, by the way,
is a regular feature in a certain kind of Malayalam commercial cinema.
Indulgent viewers may argue that such films do nothing more than hold up a
mirror to a state where domestic violence is known to be prevalent. Stop making
excuses. The objection here is not to the portrayal of a reality, but to the
normalisation of that condemnable reality.

As far as
performances go, the cast does as well as they possibly can with such average
written material. Saiju Kurup is funny while he is around, which is not enough.
Prayaga Martin serves no other purpose than to be the hero’s eye candy. He seems
to need a greater incentive than her good looks to fall for her, which is the
only the reason I could imagine for why the makeup artist slaps so much
blush-on on to her chubby cheeks.

This brings me to Pokkiri Simon’s unnaturally cheery
colour palette, starting with a grand opening aerial shot of the town in which
it is set, where the rooftops look so bright, spotless and picture-book-like
that even a novice might spot the extent of mindless colour correction that has
gone into that frame. To what end?

If that effort had
been invested in the writing instead, it might have made sense. It would have
also made sense for a Malayalam film featuring so many Tamil dialogues to carry
subtitles for its Tamil lines. In that department as in the rest of the film,
it seems like no one wanted to tax their grey cells too much while making Pokkiri Simon. Such an insipid tribute to Vijay is as good asan insult.

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About Me

Anna MM Vetticad is an award-winning journalist, journalism teacher and author of the critically acclaimed bestseller The Adventures of an Intrepid Film Critic, an overview of the Hindi film industry presented through an account of a year in which she watched every single Bollywood film released in India’s National Capital Region. A journalist since 1994, she has worked with India Today, The Indian Express and Headlines Today. At HT she hosted her own interview show Star Trek which drew all India’s eminent entertainment personalities. While Anna has spent most of her career as a behind-the-scenes editorial person, she has also reported on most major Indian entertainment and lifestyle events and several international ones including Cannes and the Oscars, in addition to being the film critic for Headlines Today. She is currently reporting and writing for multiple publications on cinema and social issues with a focus on gender concerns. The Adventures of an Intrepid Film Critic is available on amazon.com, ebay.in, flipkart.com, ombooksinternational.com, ombooks.com, infibeam.com, homeshop18.com and dialabook.in among other websites, and in stores across India. Twitter: @annavetticad